NYC Community Board 2 Meets Tomorrow to Consider Christopher Street Pier’s Curfew
Melissa Sklarz, a transgender activist, says in “Gay and Loud” in this week’s Village Voice that the battle over a curfew for the Christopher Street pier “has turned into a full-fledged culture war.” While FIERCE!, a gay-youth group, is pushing for a 4AM curfew for the Christopher Street pier, which many queer teens call their own, many Greenwich Village residents would like to see the pier shut down as early as 11:30PM, hoping the change from the current 1AM closing time would tone the neighborhood down some.
People seeking a resolution to this in-tractable turf war have found themselves caught in the middle, attacked by both sides. Supportive gestures have backfired. Arthur Schwartz, of Community Board 2’s waterfront committee, which has held the hearings, tried to encourage the neighborhood to confront the apparent racial dynamics. “It’s important for everyone to deal with the fact that the kids out there on the pier are largely black and Hispanic,” he says. That means they have a different relationship to the area’s white residents than white gay kids would, he notes, as well as a different need for safe queer space.
On March 6, Schwartz drafted a resolution calling for a midnight curfew. In the text, he noted that the “rowdyism” was coming from crowds of “mostly” gay youth of “African American and Hispanic origin.” FIERCE! immediately tagged him with the label of racist. Schwartz, a civil rights lawyer for 30 years, says he was only trying to help the kids.
Likewise, Sklarz, the activist who formerly headed the board’s gay committee, has defended the teens’ claim to gather on the Christopher Street pier. But when she pleaded with FIERCE! members to recognize that the West Village was gentrifying and becoming a haven for young families, too, she got booed. “It’s nasty, and feelings are hurt, and the effort to find a solution is rejected,” says Sklarz, who resigned from the board earlier this month.
Community board members thought they’d ironed out a compromise with the March 6 proposal. The plan included keeping the nearby Pier 54, in the meatpacking district, open until 2 a.m. Village residents would get their early curfew; gay teens, their safe space. But some 200 FIERCE! members at the meeting rejected the proposal, seeing it as a move to get them out of the West Village. Without buy-in from the kids, the waterfront subcommittee wouldn’t recommend the measure.
I know some of the young people being written about in this article, who go to the Piers. And I am sorry that this article implies that they are unreasonable. I am proud of the community organizing they have have done in the face of real hostility and classic white liberalism/entitled attitudes. Yes, race matters; and racism is at work here — racism as a systemic and institutionalized form of discrimination being enacted and played out in various ways in this struggle, in the positions people stake out. The larger context is that the West Village is an extremely wealthy white neighborhood and the young people coming to the Piers are often disenfranchised, mostly people of color, some homeless, etc. They have found and built community there for years. The Pers has a long and rich queer history being erased by gentrification. I have gone to the meetings (and there’s one tomorrow); I have spoken at the meetings; I have heard the vitriol coming from the mouths of some of these residents. These youth are seen as disposable. They are criminalized and regarded with hostility. I don’t think they are perfect, but you shouldn’t have to be perfect to be able to be in *public* space.
I am well aware of how frustrating it is to not be able to sleep, at issues of noise, I live in the East Village, crawling with mostly white NYU students who careen about drunk at all hours of the night. They also spill over in the West Village as well. But who gets targetted most frequently are youth of color who don’t look like they belong. The entitlement of the residents astounds and infuriates me to no end. I can’t even write about this coherently.
Update:
CB2 passed this resolution, a program with a trial period until 6/30:
Pier 45 to remain open til 1 AM.
Bathrooms and food vendors will be available until 1 AM.
FIERCE will create teams to patrol Christopher St. to discourage noise making and engage in ‘self policing”
Hudson River Park Trust, CB2, local electeds, and FIERCE will work with service providers to build upon informal network of peer ed and outreach workers who already work at Pier 45. Various mobile social service and health providers for queer youth will be allowed to park and provide services near Pier 45.
Pier 45 Task Force will be created, and will include CB2, local elected officials, Boro Pres., 6th pct. of NYPD, and LGBT youth service providers to monitor the above program, make necessary modifications, and make a rec of whether and how this program (including 1 AM closing) should continue or be modified after 6/30
1 Am curfew is on a test run til 6/30. A community advisory panel (the Task Force mentioned above) which includes members of FIERCE get to review, monitor, and make decisions about whether to extend the curfew or make any changes after 6/30. This is a victory for FIERCE.
And the meeting was *packed*. FIERCE did a fabulous job of getting allies and members in that room.
spinster: THANK YOU for the updates on this topic!
In a way this is reminiscent of developers who build subdivisions out in the boondocks adjacent to big airports. Then people move in – knowing full well that the airport is there – and complain about how loud the jets are. Just because you have the power/money to afford to buy/build a place somewhere doesn’t mean you’re entitled to displace the prior residents. Oh, wait … maybe we should talk to the original native inhabitants of the western hemisphere about that.
This isn’t just a NYC issue. The long-standing haven for the GBLT community in Houston [Montrose] has been slowly taken over by rich, straight whites. It’s sad to see safe-havens for diversity and culture being blanched out, whether it be through active repression like Pier 45 or more subtle financial/cultural take-overs.
Montrose used to a a thriving artistic and gay community. Now, many GBLT can’t afford to even eat there, let alone live.
Nothing seems to be easier than seeing someone whom you can help but not helping.
I suggest we start giving it a try. Give love to the ones that need it.
God will appreciate it.